Joining Ranks With The Giants Of Prog

"Right now I'm trying to eat soup with chopsticks. It doesn't get much better than this."

Jim Grey, lead singer of Brisbane's progressive rock heavyweights Caligula's Horse, likes a challenge, but aside from soup evading his chops when he phones in before the band's impending national headline tour, he couldn't be more wrong — it does get better than this, and it's getting better by the day for the five-piece.

Since forming in 2011, the melting pot of seasoned players have racked up support slots alongside genre luminaries, and last year released their acclaimed third album Bloom. Their relentless touring has swelled their fan base and hoisted their name into the progressive rock lexicon the world over. It's a state of affairs Grey is more than happy with, but he's chomping at the bit to headline their impending national tour.

"I don't believe that taking away the rights of innocent children and imprisoning them indefinitely when they have literally done nothing wrong is a political opinion at all."​

"Playing with some of our favourite bands like Opeth and Mastodon and Tesseract, the crossover is really good for people seeing us for the first time, so we always have a really good response," he explains. "That said, there's nothing like a Caligula's Horse show at home in Brisbane. Part of it is because we're playing at home but it's also because the energy in that crowd is like nothing else." 

Caligula's Horse's first jaunt to Europe last year also garnered them with a whole bunch of new ears to entrance, but Grey credits progressive Australian acts like Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus and 12 Foot Ninja for paving the way overseas and making punters hungry for our "distinctive flavour and attitude, and larrikinism".

The band were in Stuttgart and three days out from their Paris show when the November shootings rocked the world. After some pretty intense discussion, they set off for France.

"It just felt like Paris," Grey deadpans. "It feels like a silly thing to say, but we were afraid right up until the moment we stepped off the bus. It was when you went to the touristy areas, which were devoid of people. But the Parisians were all like 'well fuck you, I've got shit to do'."

A different kind of worldly conflict is addressed in the band's new video for single Turntail. Grey's vivid imagination has been transposed into the stark imagery of a girl in monotone hues trapped by restraints until she breaks free and the colour floods back. His depiction is a statement on our nation's imprisonment of refugees, and it's a discussion he believes we should not package as "politics".

"I have strong political opinions but I don't believe that taking away the rights of innocent children and imprisoning them indefinitely when they have literally done nothing wrong is a political opinion at all," he explains. "I think that's just being a reasonable goddamn person. So that does tend to speak through my lyrics."

For now, pressing national issues will have to wait. As the guys get ready to tackle their nine-date tour around the country with Perth's Chaos Divine and some impressive local supports, Grey's pressing matter of how to eat soup with chopsticks has taken a turn for the worse.

"Yeah it's not good, I've got a spoon," he admits. "I've resorted to my white boy spoon."